Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

DOIs should be the last element in a citation irrespective of the format used. The DOI citation should begin with "doi:" in lowercase followed by the DOI with no spaces between the ":" and the DOI.

doi:10.5284/1000022

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Discussion:

Early history of the town

Of all Edward's new towns of north Wales, Newborough on Anglesey is an anomalous case. It was founded not in an attempt to attract English settlers to Wales but as a town for those inhabitants who were forced to move from Llanfaes to make way for the king's new town of Beaumaris, founded in 1296. Rhosyr, the place that became the 'new borough', was already occupied by a royal court (llys) belonging to the princes of Gwynedd, the site of which was excavated by archaeologists in the 1990s.[280] The court buildings were enclosed by a perimeter wall and included a timber-built hall, the whole complex dating from the early-thirteenth century when it functioned as an administrative centre for this south-west part of the island of Anglesey.[281] Edward visited Rhosyr in 1283 and was on the island in August of that year when he also visited the site which was to become Beaumaris.[282]

Beaumaris was chartered in 1296, but the inhabitants of Newborough did not receive their borough charter until 1303.[283] Between these two dates the burgesses of Llanfaes were moved out and their new borough created. Some thirty burgesses were reluctant to make the move to the new town - which considering the better geographical position of Llanfaes is perhaps not surprising - and were fined for holding out there.[284] Meanwhile their houses were being pulled down and the materials used to make new buildings in Beaumaris.[285] The new site created for them at Rhosyr was the same in value and extent as the burgesses had at Llanfaes, and at sometime before 1302 90½ acres of land 'were appropriated at a stroke to the use of the borough', to make the new town.[286] A little later, this situation is explained in the Pipe Rolls of 1306-7: 'just over 90 acres of demesne have been assigned to certain Welshmen in compensation for the burgages they used to hold in Llanfaes [for] the inhabitants of that town have been moved by the king to Newborough and their lands assigned to Beaumaris castle'.[287] The chosen location for the 'new borough', the site of the llys at Rhosyr, with its significance as an established Welsh administrative centre, was perhaps seen by the former burgesses of Llanfaes as the best option available under the circumstances. The charter issued by the king in spring 1303 conferred on the burgesses the same privileges enjoyed by the borough of Rhuddlan, an Edwardian foundation of 1277 and a rather ironic choice since it was very much an English town.[288] Before Newborough was formed there was, however, a market and fair already operating at Rhosyr, perhaps another reason why the place was chosen for the burgesses of Llanfaes.[289] The presence of existing inhabitants at Rhosyr did cause some problems for the folk arriving from Llanfaes, and in 1305 'with diplomatic foresight worthy of larger municipalities, the burgesses of Newborough petitioned Prince Edward of Caernarfon to remove the villain tenants then dwelling in their midst, so that their burgages might be surrounded by certain metes and bounds'.[290]

In 1304-5, shortly after its foundation, the 'new borough' appears in the account roll of the Chamberlain of the Principality of North Wales, returning £8 8s 6d a year in rents.[291] Market tolls amounted to 59s 3d, and the market was held every Tuesday.[292] The accounts also record expenditure on a new mill there.[293] A later survey, of 1352, records a total of 58 holders of placeae (plots) in Newborough, predominantly with Welsh surnames, and reveals that not only were some of these individuals holding more than one plot each, they were also paying different amounts in rent, suggesting that their plots were different in size too.[294] Three year's prior to the survey, the burgesses were granted the right to elect their own mayor, though it was 'stipulated that the mayor had to be an Englishman'.[295] The burgesses were also beginning to feel the effects of their more exposed position in this south-western part of the island. In 1331, 'on the feast of St Nicholas, one hundred and eighty-six acres [about a third of the land around the borough] were so entirely destroyed by the sea and overrun by sand that they were useless for further cultivation', losing the burgesses £4 11s 6d a year in revenue.[296] Much later, in 1561, an order was made to forbid 'pulling up of mor-hesg (marram grass)' to 'stave off further encroachment' by the sand.[297] Edward Lewis claims that 'the borough seemed to have reached the heyday of its prosperity during the fourteenth century'.[298] In the sixteenth century the town still seemed to be doing quite well, having 93 houses in c.1547, and in 1507 Henry VII had moved the county courts there from Beaumaris, though 'this had to be reversed in 1549 when it was said that the town had become impoverished and was no longer capable of supporting its pre-eminence in the shire'.[299] It seems that despite Newborough's inherently Welsh character and history it was, right from the start, a place that saw interference by the English crown.

The design and plan of the town

Newborough sits on a long ridge of high ground and its layout is orientated so as to fit it. The town comprises two main streets that intersect to form a cross shape, one of which runs along the north-east/south west axis of the ridge. To the north of this, and in parallel, is a further street, making the street pattern into a grid plan, albeit a simple one. The two parallel streets, Church Street/Pen-Dref Street and Lôn Twnti are both laid out at an angle of about ninety degrees to the intersecting street, formed by Chapel Street/Malltraeth Street. However, of the two intersections, the angle closest to a perfect right-angle is formed by the two main streets. Where they meet was the market place and also the site of the town hall, shown to be 'in ruins' on a map dating from 1738-9.[300] The two main streets were once broader in width than they are today, as is shown by the 1836 Tithe Map, and both were wider than Lôn Twnti to the north, which appears little more than a lane on nineteenth century maps.

Newborough's two main streets were straight as well as broad. Thanks to the excavations carried out at Cae Llys, it is clear that Church Street/Pen-Dref Street ran right up to the entrance gate of the llys, a seat of the princes of Gwynedd.[301] There, at the end of the long ridge and looking down the straight street into the town, the llys stood close to the church of St Peter, which itself may 'have originally been a royal chapel to the court'.[302] The town plan, then, is orientated not only to take advantage of local topography, but is also set out on an alignment that links it to the court complex, even to the extent of having the street set at a right-angle to the perimeter wall of the llys.[303] The new town and the royal court thus have a close relationship, as if the town was designed around the latter (the llys buildings certainly pre-date the town) in such a way to emphasise the visual dominance of the court, a feature also suggested by the archaeology of the site.[304] In effect, the arrangement of town and court at Newborough imitates the spatial pattern of Edward's castle-town layouts, where the towns are laid out before the castle gates. This seems to have been done deliberately and suggests some overall design for Newborough had been thought out. By the time the town was being laid out, around 1300, the court complex - or at least the manor to which it pertained - was in English hands, having been granted to the king's wife, Eleanor of Castile,[305] suggesting perhaps that this idea of using the street layout to link the court with the town was indeed based on the thinking of Edward's men, and thus akin to the castle towns they had founded elsewhere in north Wales. Written evidence of the time would seem to corroborate this, for in the account describing the amount of land at Rhosyr appropriated by the king for the new town, dating to around 1300, it was also stipulated that the prescribed area being 'granted to the old burgesses in recompense for the lands vacated by them at Llanfaes' actually excluded 'four acres taken up by the 'royal roads' of the borough'.[306] These 'royal roads' may well have been laid out by the king's men as part of their work in portioning the land at Rhosyr, which would explain why Church Street aligns with the central entrance of the court complex. It would also perhaps explain a curious feature of Newborough's plan - the irregularities in its plot patterns.

The regular form of the town's street plan, with its straight wide streets and right angles, is at odds with the irregular pattern of the town's plots. The plots themselves are of varying shapes and sizes, and overall they look as if they have been squeezed into a pre-existing field pattern. The overall pattern of plots is like a Maltese cross, the wedge-shaped arms of which are formed by the ever-deeper building plots that extend back from the main street axes that radiate out from the centre of the town. The plots closest to the market place are the shallowest in depth, while those further out the deepest. Why this should be so could be because the straight streets were cut through existing field-lands. The sinuous form of the town's plot boundaries suggest this, too, and there are many cases in medieval towns where this particular shape reflects a process of laying out plots on cultivation strips or agricultural landholdings.[307] The documentary sources again help on this. In 1305, the newly arriving burgesses were seeking 'to remove the villein tenants then dwelling in their midst', that is to say those existing inhabitants of Rhosyr whose lands were being appropriated for the new borough, 'so that their burgages might be surrounded by certain metes and bounds'.[308] It seems that the agricultural tenants were being moved so that in their place the burgesses could have their plots for their burgages, and so the likelihood is that the burgages were simply set out within the former field-lands and followed the strip pattern of earlier landholdings, enclosing them and thus preserving in the plot pattern not only the lines of field boundaries but also tenancies of Rhosyr.[309] The different-sized plots that resulted from this process are probably the reason for the variations in the rents being paid by the burgesses for their placeae in the survey of 1352.[310]

The contrast between the town's straight regular streets and its irregular plot patterns thus tells an interesting story about Newborough's design and planning around 1300. It would appear that the streets were set out first, orientated to fit local topography but also to line up with the former Welsh llys. These streets cut through an existing landscape of fields and landholdings that belonged to the tenants of Rhosyr. Afterwards the plots were defined, and their boundaries fixed upon the ground. In the process of removing existing tenants to make way for the new burgesses, the patterns of their agricultural holdings were used as a basis for the burgesses' plots, hence the irregular-looking plot patterns.[311] This would be easier to do than erasing field-boundaries: simply changing the legal basis of the tenure of the land (through the borough charter) rather than setting out plots on a new arrangement. Had the latter been done, the result would have been a town plan with regular plots as well as streets, as is the case with some of Edward's other new towns, at Flint and Holt for example, where the town was laid out all in one go. But instead at Newborough there were evidently two-phases in setting out the town, resulting in the differences in the forms of the streets and plots. This is comparable to the situation at Rhuddlan, where there is a similar incongruity between street and plot patterns. The work on setting out Newborough was also probably divided between the king's men and the local community, the royal agents being responsible for laying out streets, and the new burgesses (and the old tenants) for arranging the placeae. The latter required some negotiation which is why the burgesses brought in Prince Edward in 1305. The king's men may also have worked previously at nearby Beaumaris, but if they were the same people they clearly took a different approach at Newborough. Not only did they only lay out just streets (and not plots), they also decided to use a very different layout of streets. Indeed, in its details Newborough's design has no obvious parallels compared with Edward's other new towns in Wales, though the arrangement linking the royal court with the street plan is reminiscent of his castle-towns.

The town as it is today

Maurice Beresford notes of Newborough that 'the whole place is dismal on all but the sunniest days', echoing Richard Fenton's earlier, but no less disparaging view that it is 'a wretched place'.[312] The town itself is quiet and largely residential, many of the buildings fitting still into the medieval plot pattern, and which despite their grey-rendered façades in many cases may date back at least two or three centuries.[313] There are some late-twentieth century housing estates sandwiched between the two parallel streets, while the site of the llys is open for inspection, with its foundations exposed. Newborough's population stood at around 800 in 2001.

Johnstone, 'Cae Llys', p.252; on the church see RCAHMW, Anglesey, pp.118-19.

Johnstone, 'Cae Llys', p.255.

Johnstone, 'Cae Llys', p.269, notes that 'the external face of the [perimeter] wall... cut into the original ground surface in order to exaggerate the external appearance' of it, though it should also be noted here that he suggests the entrance on the east side of the walled enclosure 'appears too narrow and not sufficiently elaborate for it to have been the main entrance into the complex' (p.267).

A study of the agricultural landholdings of Rhosyr is to be found in Hendre Bach, Newborough: archaeological assessment (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 461, 2002), in which the 'arable parcels' of the local open field system have been identified (p.6). Archaeological work has also identified early property boundaries along Church Street, see N. Johnstone, Church Street, Newborough: archaeological evaluation (G1382) (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 191, 1996), pp.1-4; R. White, unpublished letter dated October 3 1979 held by Gwynedd Archaeological Trust (in Project File G1382).

Carr, 'Extent of Anglesey', pp.262-72.

An unpublished and undated report on Newborough and Rhosyr by Gwynedd Archaeological Trust refers to '99 long (?213 feet) and narrow (15 feet) burgages' (p.1 of typescript). Field survey of the town in 2004 revealed a wide variation in the widths and depths of plots, as indicated also by nineteenth century mapping. See 'Data downloads'.